The Sinful Self: Formation and Transformation

Taking the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) and the “penitential Psalms” as sites for late antique and early medieval investigations of the effect of sin on the self, this chapter proposes that exegetes saw the self as malleable and permeable. Commentaries and sermons framed the self as sinful but salvageable. Changing views of agency, responsibility, and remedies produced shifts in representations of communal interests and penitential interpretations of well-known scriptural texts. Protections against the penetrations and deformations of sin were erected in liturgical rituals and communal prayer. The universal stain of sin fostered a porous relation between the individual and the community, each bound to the other in a metaphysical, corporate entity encasing all selves. Christian views of individual autonomy created as well a spatial expanse of the individual interior in which the soul could wander, even become lost. Emerging from that grim void to salvation was to grasp a lifeline of the penitential words of others, sung in concert, in an activation of universal memory, to transform the self into a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem.